This special issue of Queensland Review is focused on the long history of migration in regional Queensland. It integrates analysis by historians and social scientists to explore the continuities and changes that have characterised Queenslanders’ lives outside the metropolitan centre of Brisbane. Together, the articles reveal how mobile populations and cultural belonging have been negotiated, and continue to be negotiated, in regional Queensland.

The first group of German settlers arrived in Queensland before it existed on any maps. They came not primarily to seek a better future for themselves, but with the express intention of conducting an Aboriginal mission. This group germinated three of the first four mission attempts in Queensland, and their failure left a significant gap in Queensland's mission effort until the 1870s, by which time the frontier wars were practically over.

Until the 1960s, the settlement of Lebanese migrants in Queensland was characteristically regional, with the immigrants dispersed widely throughout the state. Immigrant settlement involves a dynamic and complex interaction between the immigrants and the social, political and economic structures of the receiving society. An analysis of the settlement experience of Lebanese immigrants in Queensland from the 1880s reveals the interplay of several factors, which resulted in a distinct pattern of settlement. Fundamental to this experience was the influence of racially exclusive state and Commonwealth legislation and immigration policies. Additionally, Queensland's particular geography and style of development, in conjunction with the predominance of self-employment and the segregation of Lebanese in petty commercial occupations such as hawking and shopkeeping, significantly determined the immigrants’ geographic settlement pattern. Finally, a less obvious but nonetheless important factor was the determination of the immigrants to settle permanently in Queensland. Whatever the reasons, this dispersed settlement pattern significantly shaped the lives of the immigrants and their descendants.

Chinese-run stores were a vital part of the regional communities that developed throughout Australia in the nineteenth century. Functioning variously as supply stores, post offices, banks, cook-shops, hotels and hiring depots, they helped to maintain links between regional areas and metropolitan centres, connecting local businesses to overseas markets. Chinese immigrants were a dominant part of this retail trade across the country. By 1901, there were 800 people of Chinese descent working in Queensland shops, while the South Australian census listed 400 Chinese shopkeepers for the same year.

Letizia de Rosa's father first arrived in Melbourne in the late 1940s as a ‘runaway’, disembarking from a ship where he was working as a bartender. According to Letizia, the working conditions on the ship were exploitative and his father's decision to leave the ship was an act of protest and perhaps even activism. Soon he found himself in a country whose language he could not speak, alone and worried about being found by the authorities:

In April 2010, an Indian university student was robbed while leaving the campus of his university in regional Queensland. Soon afterwards, the local newspaper described how a ‘gunman’ had accosted the student and ‘forced [him] to lay [sic] face-down on the ground’. The event was not isolated in the national context; there had been a sharp rise in media reports of violence against Indian students in Australia during the preceding six months. The attack in the regional city of Toowoomba appeared to echo these other incidents, given that the victim was an Indian student and the alleged perpetrators were young white Australian males. The case called our attention to how reports of violent racism in metropolitan centres might affect perceptions of social inclusion in regional communities.

Every year, over 30,000 international students study in regional Australia, in urban centres that lack the intercultural resources and cross-cultural literacies of metropolitan cities. The University of Southern Queensland (USQ) supports and brings together over 26,000 students studying both on campus and online, including a diverse international student population of 7,000 students. The university's enrolment of international on-campus students is the second highest in the Regional Universities Network, of which USQ is a member. This article analyses the experiences of international students as they encounter an unfamiliar Australian culture in the context of studying in Toowoomba, the regional city where USQ has its main campus. These students’ experiences of engaging, becoming familiar with and mastering new and unfamiliar cultural practices and academic literacies provides insight into the processes of acculturation that students undergo as they make their transition to life in regional Australia, both at university and in Queensland communities.